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Month: July 2017

Hello wild ones!! Hopefully this is finding you relaxing on your Friday evening. I’m run down as hell, or at least I feel that way this evening.

I spent most of the day with Shelby and her newborn, Sterling, because I’ve been trying to be a better friend. It’s been an unofficial goal of mine for a couple of months now. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before about how terrible of a friend I feel that I am, but recently I realized that I don’t want to have regrets 10 years down the line when I can do something about my relationship now, so I’ve been making a serious effort to connect to the people I want in my life that I may not see every day. I’m feeling pretty good about my progress thus far, but honestly, I have to constantly remind myself not to fall into bad habits of just forgetting about people until something jobs my memory.

Speakin’ of memory, I think I told you that this week I was going to show you the explosion box that I made and kind of walk you through how I made it, well due to the fact that I spent so much time with my bestie and her baby I didn’t get the thing written. Ugh. So that is going to have to be put off a bit longer.

Which kind of brings up what I want to talk about tonight. I want to be better at this. I want to be super good at the bloggin’ game and right now I feel like I’m mediocre at best. I hate feeling ordinary, so I am going to do something I should have done last year and study up on how to make my blog better. You guys deserve better and I need to be the best that I can be because otherwise what the hell is the point.

If you can think of any blogs, books, articles, or other material I should check out please feel free to let me know in the comments or shoot me an email. Next week is going to be all about trying to make this a better place to hang.

I’m so over just being okay.

I wanna be great.

I wanna be killin’ the bloggin’ game, so I’m going to start working toward making it better all over.

Again, if you have any suggestions or comments on things you think I may be doing wrong, or shit I could just improve on, please let me know. Criticism is part of leaning. That being said, keep the douchy stuff to yourself, because I am liable to go off on a troll.

Part of this trying to be better thing is that I’m going to work on writing my blogs the day before I post them. Otherwise, we are going to be constantly running into problems like we have in the past, I get busy, I make plans (like today), or I just can’t get something done because other shit is going down.

I’m also going to be doing some soul searching, so maybe prepare yourself for some touchy, feely, mopey, angsty, and possibly depressing, but very revealing post next week. I’m warning you now kids, my brain is a scary place to live and I will be unleashing it on you, so get ready.

Alright, well I’ve got some stuff I need to get done before I go back to work tomorrow, so I’m gonna hit the road. I will talk to you again on Monday. Be sure to go follow me on Instagram to see what I get up to this weekend. Check out my Goodreads to see what I’m reading. And if you’ve got snapchat go look for me crazydame90.

Hello wild ones and welcome to another Hump Day Book Review! Hopefully your week is going well thus far. I got some startling news today that turned into planning a little trip to see C&C up in Bastrop soon, so I guess that’s good. Other than that I’m just chillin at home until it’s time to go back to work on Saturday. Tonight as soon as I’m done with this post I’m gonna get back to work on my car’s sunshade because I still haven’t finished that bitch and I need to get it done and in the dang car.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that little update out of the way, let’s move on to the reason you’re here, Hump Day Book Review of Beau and the Beast by Kay Simone

If it’s not obvious by the title this book is a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a tiny bit of gender bending, which I was all about.

Beau is a boy unlike any other. When we first meet him he’s crying and upset because of a fairy tale his father was telling him in which the “monster” is killed. The little interlude really sets the tone for the rest of the book because Beau didn’t understand why the monster was being punished for being a monster, it couldn’t help the way it was born. Oh man, I already had some tingles.

Alright, so it fast forwards to present day Beau, who is toiling away at a newspaper to make enough money to support his disabled brother, Noah, and himself. These two boys are kind of lost in the world without each other. Noah stumbles across a video of a large beast in the hallway of a prestigious building in their fair city, he’s been spying on people forever. He has the genius idea to blackmail the owner of the penthouse and Beau volunteers to go to the meet up because he doesn’t want his brother in any more trouble than he’s already been in. Little do they know that the occupants of that penthouse have set a trap of their own to scare the would be blackmailer off, so poor Beau ends up captured.

During a short interrogation of their captive the occupants discover that Beau is a journalist and come up with a scheme to get them out of the mess their boss has trapped them in.

Wolfram and his close staff had a curse set upon them by a pissed off witch nearly 10 years ago, which they have been unable to undo. Unlike it’s older counterpart, only Wolfram has been transformed in this curse, he’s been turned into a beast, while his staff simply cannot leave the penthouse or they will die. Deep shit people. The staff is convinced that if they could get a book written about their boss and his situation out to the public that it would break the curse, so they offer Beau an obscene (I’m talking ridiculously obscene) amount of money to stay with them for a month and write his bio.

Beau meets Beast. Of course Wolfram is bracing himself for hysterics, even his staff has a hard time looking at him, but Beau takes his beastly appearance all in stride. Guys, Beau is seriously special. He not only befriends Wolfram, but makes him and his staff interact way more than they have in the 9 years they been stuck together. Unlike his staff, Wolfram has not only been cutoff from the physical outside world, but from his staff as well because he knows that his appearance makes them uncomfortable. Ha, Beau blows that shit straight out the water by making them all have dinner together. He’s seriously a breath of fresh air in their dreary little world.

Now, everything is not all sunshine and lollipops. Noah along with his Beau’s ex boyfriend, Lincoln, have become suspicious of Beau’s job offer and subsequent disappearance. And those two complete opposites get their own little side story where they try to put their heads together to figure out what really happened to Beau and where he’s gone.

All the while Beau is falling in love with his Beast and the Beast is falling in love with him. Which of course results in some beastiality-esque sex, Wolfram may be a man at heart, but that’s about the only part of him that is still “human.”

Beau finishes his book, nothing happens. No surprise there folks, if you’ve seen any other form of this classic fairy tale you know the curse is only broken through love, and that love has to be verbalized.

One thing I really loved about this retelling is that there’s not really a villain, other than the bitch who cursed them. There’s no Gaston in this version, early on I thought that Lincoln, the ex, was going to be a giant douche nozzle like Gaston, but he turns out to be this amazing guy. Spoiler, he falls in love with Noah, who is seriously disfigured and disabled from an accident that killed both of their parents. The two could not be more opposite, but fall in love while trying to “rescue” Beau.

Alright, so the end. Oh man, so Lincoln and Noah come up with a harebrained plan to just bust into the penthouse and demand the release of Beau, of course that goes belly up when he see’s Wolfram and starts attacking, which causes Wolfram to attack. Shots are fired and then poor Wolfram is bleeding out on the floor while an inconsolable Beau confesses his love. Cue the fairy god mother magic music.

Here’s another area where this book deviates from the norm, Wolfram doesn’t turn back into a man! He stays a beast. Kay is a genius. Instead of making him turn back into a normal man, he stays a beast which of course makes Beau push harder from the non-normal people of the world to be accepted into society. Our epilogue is Beau doing an interview for his second book (the one he wrote about Wolfram being his first) in which he tells the story of every non-human person he has met since the publishing of his first novel. It’s seriously cool kids. He makes a place in the world for all of those who had no place before. How amazing is that? I think that right there is the thing I loved most about this book.

Beau is working toward changing the world. It’s beautiful. Which earns this book 4 bright shiny Hump Day stars.

Alright, so for next week….ugh…Oh, I think I’ve got one!

Detective Douglas Brody has only ever known the life of a cop. Raised strict but fair by his police chief father, he joined the academy right out of school, climbed the ranks hard and fast, and now works homicide for the City of Charleston. The job is his entire life. For years it’s kept him happy enough to minimize the side of him that craves what he believes is wrong. An accident on the job puts him on medical leave and everything in Brody’s world changes. He has to prove himself once more to be best cop in the department, all while dealing with Zack – his persistent, sexy, and out of the closet physical therapist.

Zack is tan skin, big grins, floppy hair and tackles his job with the same full-blown enthusiasm he does everything else. When the “patient from hell” is thrown his way by another PT who can’t handle him, Zack is committed to achieving the impossible. His new patient is a head strong and hot as hell homicide detective, who oozes as much resentment as he does sex appeal. Any involvement with a patient, especially a man who is so deep in the closet he can’t see light, is something Zack swore he’d never do. But Brody slowly proves too much to resist…

Okay, so come back next week for the Hump Day Review of Slow Burn by Sam B. Morgan.

Now Imma go finish coloring my sunshade. Make sure to follow me on Instagram to see my progress. Check out Goodreads to see what else I’m reading this week. And go find me on Snapchat @crazydame90 to see the goofy shit I post on their. Night kids!

Alright, so we don’t really have anything exciting going on this week unfortunately. I’m thinking about taking some time this week to crank out the very few projects I have left in my garage, though to be honest there really isn’t any point. No one around here buys my damn stuff. I’ve had this beautifully distressed pink and white table on Facebook for like 3 weeks now and haven’t had a single damn bite. It may be time to move onto Craigslist.

Here’s a glance at the planner this week, unfilled.

I really need to start using the camera to take these pictures instead of my dang phone. I guess maybe that could be one of my weekly goals, getting use to using the camera instead of my phone…

Oh, speaking of the camera, I made an explosion box to give to S for Blueberry’s “birth”day. I took some really good photos, or at least I hope I did, so I’ll post those on Friday along with a brief break down of how I made the box. It was a really cool experiment/craft and I wish I had a reason to make more like now.

As you may or may not be able to tell, I’m trying out a new format/layout in my planner for this week. I decided that I didn’t need an entire damn rectangle for my blog and then another just for Instagram posts, so I combined them. The plan as of right now is to leave that bottom row blank so that I can use this planner as a scrap book of sorts as well. Though, for weeks like this one, there won’t really be anything to put down there, so I am toying with the idea of using it for financial stuff until I have something to stick down there. I guess I could pretend I’m going to use it for journaling.

Goals for this week are:

sort through the craft stuff in the garage and start getting rid of stuff I don’t use.

find a better way to organize my planner stuff. Right now I do most of my planner stuff at work, so I need a better way to carry all my crap around.

go walking at least once (didn’t really do that last week, though I did do quite a bit of walking around at the beach.

read Miracle Morning. I downloaded it for M a couple of weeks back and started reading it Saturday morning while waiting for everyone else to wake up. It peaked my interest, so I’m gonna to commit to reading it all the way through.

oh, and start getting more comfortable using the actual camera for blog/instagram photos.

I think that’s enough for the week. Okay kids, I’m gonna get back to filling in my planner for this week. Go check out my Instagram to see what else I’m up to this week. Hop on over to Goodreads to see what else is on my reading list. And maybe find me on snapchat @crazydame90

Hello wild ones! This post is coming in a little late due to the fact that I was stuck playing a card game and bad no way of bowing put gracefully until just a moment ago when everyone else decided hey were tired.

It’s been a long day kids. I woke up at 7 am and was on the run for the majority of my day. Started out with a visit to S, she just had her baby on Wednesday, so I went to visit the duo. From there I hit the liquor store for tonight, the dollar tree, and the gave myself a little time to get lunch. After which I went to my sisters house and wwent to two different grocery stores for stuff for the beach trip. Once all that was done we got on the road and after nearly 2 hours in the car we arrived at the beautiful beach house she snagged on Air B&B. Guys, this place is really, really pretty. Ill post pictures on Monday, or you can go check out Instagram to see it in “real time.”

We unpacked, made dinner, and for the past 2 hours I’ve been subjected to the game Cards Against Humanity. Imma go on the record now saying that I’m not really a fan. I’ve just been kind of throwing out cards I thought were funny and counting the minutes until I could go to bed. Blah.

Anyway, now I’m all tucked into my bed for the night and I’m ready to sleep. Night kids!

Hello wild ones and welcome back for another Hump Day Book Review! This week, we’re reviewing Fast Connection, the second book in the Cyberlove series by Meghan Erickson and Santino Hassell.

Oohff, that cover though.

Goodness kids, not even going to lie, I may have read this one too many times to be objective. No exaggeration I’ve probably read this book like 6-10 times since I found the series. I’m more than a little obsessed with this series, but this book in particular just really does something for me. So without any further ado, let’s get into it.

I’m in love with Dominic, Nicky, Constigan. We meet our dashing, just figuring out he’s bisexual hero in the first book Strong Signal where he’s Garrett’s hook up buddy for a short bit. He comes off a little douchy in the first book, coming on way to strong, but for me he’s like a puppy. Yea, he might pee on the floor and tear up your favorite shoes, but then he’s gonna look up at you with those soulful eyes and melt your heart with his goofy, tongue lolling grin. By the end of the first book you kind gotta like the boy, he takes to being a bisexual like a fish to water, ready to swim and eager to learn.

Dominic returns home from his last tour and finds himself floundering in his old life. He’s been gone for nearly 10 years in the army, but his life seems to have stagnated. He’s back living in his old bedroom in his parent’s house, working in the family deli, and confused about how to go about changing his life. To escape the boredom, as well as explore his new found sexuality, he cruises Grindr looking for a hook up and stumbles across Luke.

Oh Luke, the big growly hot and emotionally unavailable man of my Dominic’s dreams. Luke is complex man who likes to keep his life compartmentalized. Sex life goes securely in a box only to be opened on the weekends when his kids are with their mother and his daily life stays in a box far away from the people he hooks up with. He likes things that way, neat and uncomplicated. That all changes after a certain swaggering blonde hottie walks into his life and disrupts everything with his peanut butter sandwich.

Their relationship starts with a Grindr profile and a picture of washboard abs. Luke just wants to blow off some steam and Dominic is eager to have his first sexual encounter, not counting his time with Garrett while on base, with a man. Things get hot quick. Like super quick. Within an hour of meeting on Grindr they meet at Luke’s and then after a beer and very little conversation Luke proceed’s to blow Dominic’s mind and then turn everything upside down when right after they get each other off he’s ready to kick him to the curb and never see him again.

Poor little Luke, he never saw Dominic coming. The captain America look a like makes an impression on Luke that’s not easily forgotten. Dominic makes the grouchy man laugh, their silly conversations on Grindr have him grinning like a fool, and finally breaking his one and done rule. I’m not gonna lie to you and try to dress their relationship up into something it’s not, it’s super sex driven. For a while they only ever meet up on Friday evenings, after Luke’s kids are gone, and basically just have sex, Luke makes Dominic a sandwich, because getting off makes him ravenous, and then they go back to their separate lives. However, you get both of their point of views, so you get all the internal back and forth Luke fights with when he’s away from Dominic and the confused mess Dominic can be when trying to figure out what to do about his future. All that internal stuff kind of bleeds into their after sex conversations and both men find themselves wanting more from the other, but unwilling to say so.

That all comes to a head when Dominic takes Luke’s advice and makes a date for Halloween with someone other than Luke, GASP! Dear sweet baby Jesus, that decision prompts a hot firefighter’s costume, some even hotter hallway sex, and then a sort of sweet confession from Luke that he wants more from Dominic.

Our lovers don’t get to just ride off into the sunset just yet though, first we gotta deal with Luke’s compartmentalizing crap. The journey to happily ever after hits a giant snag when Luke’s son and Dominic’s sister runaway together to a gaming convention in Boston. Cue the record scratch. Gosh, the fight between Luke and Dominic makes my heart hurt, because each man can see that this is the end of their relationship and both are lamenting the loss of something well before they actually call it quits.

I didn’t shed too many tears though, for I knew that Luke was going to make things right. Spoiler alert, he does and they get to live happily ever after.

There were a lot of things I loved about this book. Luke believing in Dominic and pushing him towards the things he wanted out of life. Dominic’s confusion about his future. Luke wanting to protect Dominic from his father. Dominic just in general, I loved him because he was super vulnerable, all laughs on the outside to protect his soft center. I loved Luke as well because he came across as the gruff and tuff guy, but on the inside he was just a ball of fluff. A soft, cuddly teddy bear and his little cub. Awwww.

Not to say that there were some things I didn’t like. I was not a fan of their initial sex scene, just because it was Dominic’s first time (which he does not disclose) and it was kind of a harsh welcome into his newfound sexuality (though I’m sure that sadly that is the case for many young people). Luke all but slams the door in his face after they have sex. I was not a fan of Dominic’s father, I seriously did not like that guy and I hated his transformation. I like my villains/protagonists to stay shitty throughout the book, it honestly makes me more angry when they change just because it proves they didn’t have to be dicks in the first place.

Okay, so like I said earlier I have read this book several times since initially stumbling across it and I’ll likely read it again and again and again and again.

And now onto our rating! This book gets 5 stars from me. This was by far my favorite from the series and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m more than a little obsessed with Luke and Dominic.

Alright, moving onto next week’s book. We are going to be reading and reviewing Beau and the Beast by Kay Simone.

For ten years, former Wall Street executive Wolfram—along with his staff—has been magically imprisoned in his midtown penthouse after his firm pissed off the wrong witch. Now, only one thing can free him from the curse.

Unfortunately, they’re not sure what that one thing is.

But mercy for the man with none, he still can be released:
Light can lift his shadowed soul when beauty frees the beast.

When a young reporter named Beau accidentally stumbles into their midst, the staff thinks he might be the answer to the witch’s riddle—if only they can convince him to stay.

Beau has his doubts when he’s asked to write the mysterious billionaire’s biography, but he can’t say no to the huge sum of money being offered. Resigned to his fate, Wolfram hates the idea of a stranger intruding in his life.

What neither man expects is the deep connection that forms between them. As they work together, Wolfram and Beau forge a passionate bond that threatens to boil over into something more.

The only problem? Thanks to the curse, Wolfram is a seven-foot-tall monster with eight weeks left to live unless the spell is broken.

Can Beau save a love he’s only just found, or is it too late for one man to set Wolfram free?

Would you look at that cover!!! LOVE! Okay, so come back next week to see my Hump Day Review of Beau and the Beast.

In the meantime, don’t forget to go check me out on InstaGram to follow the day to day crap going on in my life. Check out Goodreads to see what else I’m reading this week. Oh, and Cassilee made me get a freaking Snapchat, you can look me up @crazydame90, so I have that now…no idea how to use the damn app which makes me feel like an 80 year old, but I’m slowly figuring it out.

Hello wild ones! Hopefully you got to do something fun this weekend before returning to the grind this week.

So, this week we actually have some stuff going on. Yay for not being completely boring! I’m heading to the beach on Friday for an over nivhter with my sister and brother in law, so we have that to look forward to. Ill be making a trip to Sam’s on Thursday to prepare, gotta buy sunblock in a 5 gallon bucket.

I got to visit with my best friend from high school today, along with her adorable 15 month old son. Can’t even remember the last time I’ve been around a kid that young. Other than the fact that there was a tiny person running about it was like we had gone back in time and settled back into our old ways. It was truly amazing.

As you may know if you’ve been here a while, I’m kind of a loner. I’ve got like 1.5 friends and not really in the marmot for more, but after taking a trip down memory lane 2 weeks ago I started missing what I used to have. I used to be this outgoing, young woman who could and would make friends with anyone. Now I’m like the cranky old man who yells at kids to stay off his lawn. I’m not saying I don’t like who I am now, but a part of me wishes I could just go back to being that girl who didn’t seem to be afraid of going out in the world.

Anyway, I found something cool at Walmart earlier that in dying to break open, so this one is gonna be a shorty.

My goal for this week is to get this fucking house clean, for real. I need to finish my deep clean and get everything back in order. Another goal is to not eat junk food any more than twice this week and to go walking at least once.

I’ll post updates on InstaGram and possibly snap chat…Cassilee made me download it. Have a great night kids!

Hello wild ones! Well another week has come and gone. I’m sitting at work trying to decide if I want to paint my nails tonight. It’s the hard choices in life kids.

I don’t have anything planned for this weekend, other than crying because I have to leave my house to work. Bleh. Though it will give me plenty of time to get a list together for next week. I’m going to the beach next weekend and before we leave Friday I want to have my house back in order and all my crap sorted.

My bad luck with books struck again last night. I bought a book, it was on 99 cents, with an interesting premise, only to be severely disappointed. I swear I put the damn book down like 10 different times only to pick it back up again because I was not about to not finish a book I paid for. Ugh. Luckily, the books gods decided to take pity on me and I stumbled across a much better book shortly after.

I think that’s it kids…like I said, nothing really going on in the life of me.